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Madison Symphony Orchestra Presents Daniel Catan’s “Florencia en el Amazonas”

The operatic call of the wild

by Jonathan Gramling

Part 2 of 2

Daniel Catán had a calling to write operas although he didn't complete his first until he was nearly 40 years old. Catán was in Madison the week of October 18 to witness the Madison Symphony Orchestra's performance of the world premiere of his orchestral suite from "Florencia en el Amazona."

Writing operas is something Catán worked up to since he first took to music during his childhood in Mexico City. "When I was 4 years old, I loved the piano," Catán said during an interview with The Madison Times after speaking with a classical music class at La Follette High School. "The piano arrived at home basically for my older brother who's five years older than me. I took to it so instantly that I used to love playing it. At that age, you don't question yourself about what you want to do. Those things seem irrelevant. I loved what I did and I played with music. Music is enjoyable at every level. It isn't something you do if you are forced to do it."

Catán moved to England when he was 14 years old where he studied philosophy and music. He had to work as a stagehand at a theater to support himself. This experience gave him a continuous exposure to a variety of art forms. "Being a stagehand is a fascinating thing because you see all of the little things that happen behind the scenes and all the things that can go wrong," Catán observed. "It's a wonderful world of fantasy and imagination. When you are living through that, you can easily get addicted to it and think that is all you really want to do. Even though I say it's a world of imagination, in a way, there's a reality there too. There's an emotional reality that is very powerful."

And when Catán saw an opera for the first time, it was love at first sight. "It's difficult to know why you fall in love with something," Catán said. "There's a gut reaction that says 'This is me.' I thought 'I would love to write one of those things.' More rationally, I can say what attracts me is I love literature as well. Opera combines those two worlds: the world of literature and the world of music. I didn't start out thinking I would write opera, but when I discovered opera, I realized that was one of my ambitions. It's such a complex art form."

Catán honed his skills in several other areas first before he tackled his first opera "Rappaccini's Daughter," based on a story by Hawthorne. While his feeling for the subject matter drives Catán's work, he is guided by his formal education, including graduate degrees from Princeton University. "Sometimes, I know a certain moment in opera might be a good beginning," Catán said. "For example, in this opera, I started with an interlude that gave me the kinds of textures, the kind of musical sound world the opera was going to move in. Once I got that sound environment or that musical world, then I could start placing my characters inside. The rest was fairly easy. That is how I work with a lot of my operas. I first get the libretto more or less done. Then, I select a passage or moment in the opera that will give me the sound world that it is going to be operating in. Once I'm convinced that sound world will give me sufficient mileage for a two-hour piece, then I start working on the characters."

At the end of  "Rappaccini's Daughter," there is an interlude in a magical garden. Catán was compelled to explore this natural world more fully.  "I was eager to find a theme that would enable me to carry on writing music in that style or at least pursue that interest the way I had been developing the woodwinds and things," Catán said. "Then, I started dreaming of a new scenario. That magic garden in the Hawthorne piece ended up becoming a much larger garden, which became the Amazon."

Catán traveled to the Amazon in order to gain a feeling for the sounds and textures of this wild and exotic place, not unlike the locales for many operas written in the 18th century. "It's one of those places at the limit of civilization where what you see on the other side is not entirely civilized, not entirely human," Catán recalled. "And yet, the force of that life is so powerful that it questions every thing you are. Suddenly, you go back to being part of a very complicated world of nature, rather than thinking of yourself as a unique creature in the universe. You enter into a different domain. That's a fascinating experience."

"Amazonas," completed in 1996, was the first Spanish-language opera commissioned by a major American opera house and has been performed in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Houston. And, in a bit of life imitates art, it was performed in the Amazon.

Part of "Amazonas" takes place in a small opera house on the banks of the Amazon River that Catán observed during his trip. He was invited back to witness "Amazonas" performed there. "The theater is quite small," Catán said. "It only sits about 350-400 people. It just felt, as I was listening to the opera in that theater, that life couldn't get any better than this. It brought me everything I dreamt about and more. I felt like the happiest person in the world at that moment. It spoke to them very intensely because now, they felt it was so successful, they want to do another production. It wont be in the theater because it is relatively small. They want to do it outdoors with the backdrop of the river. That will be amazing. Then you can get 10,000 people to actually watch it."

Catán is already at work on his next opera "Las Bodas de Salsipuedes," also commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera. While he is at the top of game right now, Catán feels he will never reach perfection. He speaks of Strauss, the great composer to whom Catán has been compared, to put perfection in perspective. "For example, Strauss wrote many operas," Catán said. "They are all absolutely wonderful. The last one, when he was looking at that opera, one of the things he said to himself was 'This is the best I can do. I can do no better.' He didn't mean to say that no one else could do any better or that it was perfection. He had spent the whole of his life trying to get to a point where he would do the best he could."

Catán muses about seeing "Amazonas" performed in Madison, using Lake Mendota as a backdrop. That would use the scenic beauty of Madison to perfection, something Catán will always strive to reach.

The first part of this story appeared in the November 21-27, 2003 edition of The Madison Times.

 <Click here to read The operatic call of the wild (Part 1 of 2)>

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